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Wednesday, March 28, 2007

On the iPod this morning...

....is Dave Alvin's "West Of The West" which seemed to suit the sunny weather. There's almost a heat haze over St Pauls as I write this. Every Alvin solo album I've ever heard has been terrific and this is the best of all. It's all songs from or about California. He does John Stewart's "California Bloodlines" without that hammy tremolo that makes Stewart a bit over-ripe. He does Jackson Browne's "Redneck Friend" (wasn't that supposed to be about Greg Allman?). He does Brian Wilson's "Surfer Girl". He's great. Must get an actual copy of this. I only have it digitally which is not the same.

4 comments:

I read an interview with Jackson Browne a couple of years ago in which he was asked about Redneck Friend. The interviewer was under the impression that it was about masturbation, Browne said that redneck friend was in fact a euphamism for the penis. As in Little Elvis.

When you say an actual copy do you mean cd or vinyl? I'm not a puritan, just curious. While I love the idea of vinyl my money ends up going on cd's. It's much easier to play them in the car.

On the whole MP3 thing, when are record companies going to realise that MP3's just aren't worth 99c a song. Crap quality & no hard product. It's just daft. People like myself end up going to somewhere like gomusic.ru or allofmps.com and paying 20c per song, which is reasonable, and if we like what we here we will buy the cd. I guess this goes back to you arguement of the £1 cd. Wouldn't we all buy more music? (Well, if our wives let us).

The point that these guys are missing is that it is the 30 to 60 year olds with the money to spend on music but we are not made of money and we are not convinced by the MP3 thing (speaking as a 34 year old). Limited money and so much music (and let's face it, everyone and their granny is making music these days and a lot of it is pretty good!) means looking for cheap alternatives like gomusic. Can't say I'm too happy about it with the suggestion of them not paying royalties, although they say they do, but where needs must and all that.

I should have mentioned that when asked whether Red Neck Friend was about masturbation JB said it wasn't but Rosie was. He than went on to explain about Red Neck Friend being about offering ones sexual favours: Honey let me introduce you to my red neck friend.